The invention relates to a chain conveyor having at least one chain strand which can be driven by a toothed chain wheel and consists of oval chain links, particularly round steel links, in which conveying members, particularly buckets, are screwed to the respective chain strand in each case by means of a single U-shaped connecting shackle provided with a thread at both its ends, the connecting shackles in each case enclosing a straight part of a sidepiece of a chain link aligned perpendicularly to the chain wheel axis, and this straight part resting in a support and guide bed provided with a recess in the region of its middle, this bed being formed by a component which is detachably connected to the conveying member and whose base facing the conveying link is slightly concave.
German Utility Model No. 85/02,312 has disclosed a chain conveyor of the abovementioned type in which connecting shackles are used which are bent from round steel and are flattened on the side of their curvature facing the chain link. In this case the width of the flattened portion is less than the width of the recess in the support and guide bed. In the known design undesirable deformations of the straight part of the chain link sidepiece encompassed by the connecting shackle may occur under certain conditions, e.g. in the event of an unfavorable positioning and design of the weld reinforcement of the chain link and the application of high tensile forces.
In another chain conveyor disclosed by German Offenlegungsschrift No. 1,922,146 pairs of so-called flange dogs serve to connect the conveying members to the chain strands, the flanges of the said flange dogs being pressed by a central threaded bolt against the respectively opposite sides of the two sidepieces of a vertical link. In this case each flange bears on the link sidepieces via four clamping jaws which are arranged at a distance from one another and lie outside the region of the weld reinforcements, so that in this case there is no threat of disadvantageous deformations of the link sidepieces as may occur in the chain conveyor previously described. This second known design, with its inherent and inevitable four-point support, offers no suggestion however, not least with regard to its fundamentally different structure, regarding the redesign of a chain conveyor according to the preamble in which the conveying members are connected to only one link sidepiece in each case.